homeschooling essentials

Welcome to my final day of Homeschooling Essentials. Thank you so much for joining me this week as I’ve explored what I find necessary to teach my kiddos.

I forgot to mention it earlier in the week, but please note that there are almost 90 other mamas blogging on this topic this week, not just me and the other nine I’ve been listing at the ends of my posts. Click that banner up at the top for the full listing!

As I was trying to decide what the last item on my list should be, there were a plethora of options. Time, money, a good Bible, curriculum, a Kindle or other e-book reader… the list goes on and on. (And let me be clear: all of those, especially the Bible, are vital, I think. But I had to narrow it down to what I could fit into a week, so that’s what I’ve done.) I’ve found that with the other items I talked about this week (pencils, flexibility, and a plan), none of them would really matter without material to teach. And that’s where the library card comes in. If you have a good library system where you live, definitely invest the time to go get a card. Even if you have to pay an annual fee to access it (if you live outside of city limits and therefore your taxes don’t go to the library system, for example), it’s totally worth it. There’s no other place to get access to hundreds, thousands, millions of books for free.

I mentioned last summer when I was planning our homeschool year that I was going to use Ambleside Online for our core curriculum this year. We’ve stuck with that (for the most part), and the kids adore it. This is by far the best year of homeschooling we’ve ever done. But none of it would be possible without our library card. Almost all of the books prescribed in the Ambleside curriculum are available through our library system. And better yet, they’re not in high demand, so we’ve been able to get them pretty easily. If we’d had to buy all of those books (mostly through Amazon, as Ambleside utilizes primarily older books that a current bookstore isn’t likely to have), it would have cost us hundreds of dollars. But because of our library card, we’ve been able to spend roughly $20 on books is all. A good library system has been a real blessing to our family.

In addition to the schoolbooks, Munchkin participates in the monthly book club that the library offers. (They have one for Seahawk’s age, too, but he’s a much pickier reader and hasn’t been interested in the books they’ve been offering lately.) Without our frequent trips to the library, we wouldn’t know about the book club, and that would be a bummer.

So that’s it from me. Thanks again for joining me this week! Next week, I’ll be back to more of what I normally write about. I don’t what all I’ve got on the agenda, but there’ll be at least one recipe :). I’ll also try to have a Picture of the Week up later today or tomorrow as well.

Blessings,

Wendy

Don’t forget to click the banner up above for a HUGE list of Homeschooling Mamas talking about their essentials! And for just a taste of the topic, check out these lovely ladies: